BOXING CLEVER
To win at Goodwood, BMW are entering one of their most recent acquisitions, the legendary RS500 OL Special built in the US in the 1960s by German ex-pat Oscar Liebmann and raced to copious success in the US and Canada by his son Kurt.
It was an honour to be the first person outside the Liebmann family to ride the Daytona-winning BMW. Kurt trucked the bike up to Pocono Speedway in the Pennsylvania mountains and it wasn’t until we started chatting about the OL Special that I realised just how much endeavour Oscar expended in creating the motorcycle bearing his initials.
It might look like a BMW Rennsport externally but the engine owed more to OL’s talents as engineer and machinist than to the race shop of the Bavarian company. Oscar’s contacts in Germany remained close after he emigrated to the US in the 1950s, and they extended to the BMW factory’s Experimental Department. Among them were BMW technical director Dr Helmut Bönsch and famed engine tuner Ludwig Apfelbeck, who lent support and advice in the development
